Priest Fathers His Flock

Reverend Brings Years Of Family Experience To Job

NEWPORT NEWS — He's not here yet, at least not right now. The Rev. Charles Breindel's thoughts are with his youngest daughter, unexpectedly kept in a Richmond hospital an extra day.

Breindel's second career and new life have sent him packing for Newport News, but as it would for any father, her condition weighs on his mind.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Monday, June 25, 2001.A story in the June 16 Faith & Life section incorrectly identified VCU as Virginia Commonwealth Union. The name of the institution is Virginia Commonwealth University. (Text corrected.)

Like any father, he says the details are private.

It's a family thing.

But it's the kind of personal experience, he believes, that leads to many of the referrals he receives to counsel families who want to talk to someone who understands.

He understands -- sometimes too well -- about joy and heartache, about fear and faith.

Still he's managed to move in, arranging his new office with family photos and keepsakes, items collected from global sojourns along side theological texts.

He's here, the receptionist says, pointing up the stairs leading to the second floor.

"Father Charles is in."

* * *

Five years ago Breindel, the reddish-silver-haired single dad and health care advocate began taking the formal steps to become a Catholic priest.

At age 53, Breindel, newly assigned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is not alone among Catholics answering priestly vocational calls later in their lives after careers as mathematicians, as health care workers, as professors and as fathers.

Since the mid-1960s, the twenty-something newly-ordained priest steadily has become a relic.

In 1964, a Catholic seminary in Massachusetts became the first in North America designed to receive men age 30 and older.

The average age for seminarians in 1966 was 25, according to a study conducted for the United States Catholic Conference.

By 1993, that age rose to 32.

Catholic dioceses across the country have made strides to meet this older generation.

The priest vocation office of the Archdiocese of Chicago operates a program called Insearch to meet the needs of working and older men.

"The traditional days of the high school student entering the seminary have faded away," said Monsignor Robert Perkins, vicar general of the Diocese of Richmond.

Before Breindel graduated high school, priests and nuns encouraged him to become a priest.

Instead, he married and raised four daughters.

After his marriage ended in divorce, and later annulment, Breindel, a health-care professional at the medical college of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, became a single father struggling to balance career and family life.

"I was a single dad. I never thought of being a priest, but God kept putting opportunities to serve the church in front of me," Breindel said.

At the start of the 1990s, Breindel said, his involvement within parish life was centered on activities in which he could spend time with his kids, like youth retreats.

"I began to think that when the kids are all grown and my responsibilities are done, in terms of taking care of their financial needs, getting them into college, I was sure that I needed to go off and work for the church."

In 1996, when Breindel investigated his impulse to serve, he found out from Catholic officials that there weren't any restrictions to prevent him from being a priest.

The Catholic Church has permitted in special cases the ordinations of former Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran priests who were previously married.

Catholic widowers and husbands whose marriages have been annulled also can become priests.

"That took me by surprise," he confessed. "I meant to change my career, not to become a priest."

But he still wasn't sure. And his paternal nature persisted.

"As my children left home there would be empty bedrooms, and I always felt like that was a waste -- almost a sin," he said. "If God gives me this house with empty rooms, I should keep them filled."

Breindel began taking in international students and orphans, eventually becoming a foster parent to three youngsters.

He continued to excel at his career at VCU, blending his business expertise with his advocacy of health care for rural and disadvantaged people throughout the world.

How does the Rev. Charles Breindel feel about being referred so many cases about children, marriages, sexuality, divorces and annulments?

"God didn't give me my life experience and then ask me as a priest not to use it," Breindel said.

But just as his life experience informs his current vocation, he remains a worrier -- and a father.

Last year, his daughters joined him at his previous parish, St. Edward Catholic Church in Richmond, for mass on Father's Day. It is a fond memory he's carried with him to Newport News.

In his office, his eyes linger on other memories, gifts of Father's Days past.

Along the wall, beside his door rest pinewood displays from his youngest daughter, with a simple message in red marker: "I Dad."

In the morning, he'll be gone, down the stairs back to Richmond, to return to his other vocation as a caring and devoted father.

Michael D. Wamble can be reached at 247-4737 or by e-mail at mwamble@dailypress.com